Sunday, May 15, 2016

Installed: WARN WL LED Light Pods

Auxiliary lighting is important, especially when you are venturing off the pavement. Until recently I ran a set of inexpensive LED light pods, but recently upgraded to a much higher quality LED light from Warn Industries.

The WARN WL LED light pods utilize the latest in optical design and are able to provide more effective lumens and candela using less power. These lights have a 10 degree width beam—perfect for long distance illumination.

Other cool things about these lights is they have a 50,000 hour LED lifespan, so they're not going to go out anytime soon. The housings are made of die-cast aluminum and the lenses are UV and scratch resistant. To protect to electronics, there is voltage protection and thermal management. Plus, the lights are IP68 certified, which is a rating for water protection, and IP68 is a high standard. The lights includes stainless steel mounting hardware, too.

Another cool thing? These lights are designed, engineered, and assembled in the USA.

Since they were going on my newly re-powdercoated front bumper (check out Precision Powder Coating in Milwaukie, OR—they did an amazing job), I also opted to get some new WARN Universal Light Mounts, which were perfect for mounting on the grille guard.

Wiring them up was very easy. The wiring is nice and thick and the connectors are top-notch. I ran the lights directly off the battery, found a hole through the firewall to run the wiring for the switch, and wired everything up. It wasn't any more difficult than any other light install I'd done. However, the components are very well made, including a high-quality illuminated switch. The switch was too big for one of the square knock-out panels on the dashboard, but I had a perfect spot to the lower-left hand side of the steering wheel.

It's hard to show you how bright bright these are, but let me assure you that they're extremely bright; retina-burning, actually. My old lights had a flood pattern, but these are spots and offer much more focused light that goes a lot farther. Plus. it's easy to see how much better optics these lights have compared to my old cheapies, too.

The WARN WL Lights aren't cheap; they are available for about $360 from a variety of vendors online. However, they are super-high quality, have a limited lifetime warranty, and great optics. We're looking forward to getting to use them on our way to Overland Expo West this week, too!

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